Tuesday, March 19, AD 2024 2:45am

April 19, 1775: Lexington and Concord-Why They Fought

 

 

In 1843 twenty two year old Mellen Chamberlain, who would later be a legislator, a judge and chief librarian of Boston, interviewed 86 year old Captain Levi Preston, last surviving veteran of the battle of Concord:

Question:  “Captain Preston, what made you go  to the Concord fight?

Answer:  “What did I go for?”

Question:  “Yes, my histories tell me that you men of the Revolution took up arms against intolerable oppressions.  What were they?”

Answer:  “Oppressions?  I didn’t feel them.”

Question: “What, were you not oppressed by the Stamp Act?”

Answer:  No, I never saw one of those stamps, and always understood that Governor Bernard put them all in Castle William. I am certain I never paid a penny for one of them.

Question:  “Well, what about the tea tax?”

Answer: “Tea tax!  I never drank a drop of the stuff:   the boys threw it all overboard.”

Question: “I suppose you had been reading Harrington, Sidney, and Locke about the eternal principle of liberty?”

Answer:  “Never heard of ’em. The only books we had were the Bible, the Catechism, Watts’ Psalms, and Hymns and the Almanac.”

Question:  “Well, then, what was the matter?”

Answer:  “Young man, what we meant in going for those Redcoats was this: we always had governed ourselves, and we always meant to. They didn’t mean we should.”

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Anzlyne
Anzlyne
Wednesday, April 19, AD 2017 3:38pm

Thank you!

Cassandra
Cassandra
Wednesday, April 19, AD 2017 7:25pm

Interesting.

Not oppressed. Not taxed “without representation”. Ignorant of any the philosophical schools.

Just simply rebelling against authority.

non serviam.

Mary De Voe
Wednesday, April 19, AD 2017 9:21pm

Cassandra: Our Fifth Amendment may be found in Isaiah 50: 9. Do read our Constitution. Self-governance is an innate human civil right that inheres in the sovereign personhood of the human being. Being “owned” by George III made subjects of us all. Abraham Lincoln said: “One man cannot own another man. FREEDOM

Jack
Jack
Thursday, April 20, AD 2017 8:45am

I’m with Cassandra on this one. The Colonies rebelled against their legal authority that supported them while they were gestating and very vulnerable to attacks from the native populations, the French, and the Spanish. They ginned-up an oppression narrative because the Crown had the gall to ask them to help defer the costs of defending them. It’s ironic that at the same time the British were incubating a revolution in the salons of France that their own would turn on them, but let’s be real: the American revolt was a further move away from Logos to a secular world of Obama’s, Trumps, and Bergoglios.

Jack
Jack
Thursday, April 20, AD 2017 4:36pm

One of the first things the American government did was murder its own war heroes who rightly saw the Whiskey Tax (to pay of bankers and swindlers) as the same damn-ed thing they had just fought against. If Britain was so harsh and unfair, why did 2/3 of Americans not want a revolution? If what you say is the case, then why did Canada not follow that lead? And lastly, I’m sure you know what all these wonderful American Revolutionary leaders thought of Catholics. Do you know what the Quebec Act of 1774 was about?

“The Quebec Act angered the Virginia elite, since most of the western lands they claimed were now officially part of Quebec or in the Indian reserve. The act, which Parliament passed at the same time as legislation placing Massachusetts under crown control, also fueled resentment among Calvinist New Englanders, who saw in its autocratic, pro-Catholic provisions further evidence of an imperial conspiracy against colonial liberties.”

Jack
Jack
Thursday, April 20, AD 2017 5:49pm

Let me guess: You think America is a “shining city on a hill” don’t you?
Anyway, I appreciate the forum to express my opinion. Thank you.

David Griffey
Friday, April 21, AD 2017 1:31pm

America as shining beacon. Let me paraphrase what a professor of mine (yeah, a professor) said when I was in college in the 80s: At its worst, America has never been worse than what you’ll find in other times and places throughout the world and throughout history. At its best, we have yet to see its equal.

Cassandra
Cassandra
Saturday, April 22, AD 2017 3:06pm

You flew right by that whole right to rule ourselves section.
Not at all. “Rule ourselves” and non serviam are in the practical sense equivalent.
“Rule ourselves” led to the civil war. One cannot with consistency defend rebellion against Britain and condemn the succession of the Confederacy. It’s either “consent of the governed” or it’s not.
“Rule ourselves” is the political application of protestant repudiation of the authority of the Church.

and that most of the Founding Fathers attended Mass on occasion during the Revolution
Politically expedient religious displays have never impressed me.

Interesting that you would quote Leo XIII. You may be interpreting that to suggest that Leo thought the establishment of the secular government was providential to the Church rather than the opposite intention that the establishment of the American see was providential to bring Catholicism to the secular government. Further along you find:

“6. ….For the Church amongst you, unopposed by the Constitution and government of your nation, fettered by no hostile legislation, protected against violence by the common laws and the impartiality of the tribunals, is free to live and act without hindrance. Yet, though all this is true, it would be very erroneous to draw the conclusion that in America is to be sought the type of the most desirable status of the Church, or that it would be universally lawful or expedient for State and Church to be, as in America, dissevered and divorced. The fact that Catholicity with you is in good condition, nay, is even enjoying a prosperous growth, is by all means to be attributed to the fecundity with which God has endowed His Church, in virtue of which unless men or circumstances interfere, she spontaneously expands and propagates herself; but she would bring forth more abundant fruits if, in addition to liberty, she enjoyed the favor of the laws and the patronage of the public authority.”

The Church in America—such that it has prospered—did not do so because of the secularism of the government or its ideas about what legitimate liberty meant. It did so out of the Church’s fecundity.

The problem with discussions like this is the emotion rapped up in criticism of the philosophical errors in the founding of this nation. It is very much like pointing out problems in the papacy. Pointing out problems in the pontificate of JPII or Benedict would bring howls from many of the conservative Catholics suffering from ultramontanism. As painful as it has been, Francis has helped solve that problem. Likewise, pointing out problems in the founding of America still brings howls from those raised in the American mythology. Those errors were arguably smaller than the subsequent errors that produced communism, but they were steps along the way. Of particular importance was the establishment of the first atheist government. Ideas have consequences.

Let me present this from http://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2017/03/de-mattei-shedding-light-on-todays.html

“1517, 1717, 1917, then, are three symbolic dates, three events that are part of a single process. Pius XII, in his speech to the men of Catholic Action on October 12th 1952, summed it up like this: “Christ yes, Church no; (the Protestant Revolution against the Church); then: God yes, Christ no; (the Masonic Revolution against the central mysteries of Christianity); finally the impious cry: God is dead; rather: God has never existed (the atheistic Communist Revolution). And here – Pius XII concludes – is the attempt to build the structure of the world upon foundations that We do not hesitate in pointing out as, the principals responsible for the danger that threatens mankind”.

Need I point out the prevalence of Masons and Deists amoung the founding fathers?

I have no illusion of convincing you of anything.

But then, Of course your argument is really with Pope Leo XIII, and not with me.

Cassandra
Cassandra
Saturday, April 22, AD 2017 7:52pm

“I have no illusion of convincing you of anything.”

At last, something we can agree on.

Your other responses are likewise not the least surprising, and not the least convincing.
Time will ultimately demonstrate the correct position.

Fred
Fred
Friday, April 28, AD 2017 2:46pm

Trump used this story in his address to the NRA today.
Someone on his staff must be reading you.

Suburbanbanshee
Friday, April 28, AD 2017 9:13pm

“Then Samuel told all the words of the Lord to the people that had desired a king of him, and said, ‘This will be the right of the king that shall reign over you: He will take your sons, and put them in his chariots, and will make them his horsemen, and his running footmen to run before his chariots; and he will appoint of them to be his tribunes, and centurions, and to plough his fields, and to reap his corn, and to make him arms and chariots. Your daughters also he will take to make him ointments, and to be his cooks, and bakers. And he will take your fields, and your vineyards, and your best oliveyards, and give them to his servants. Moreover, he will take the tenth of your corn and of the revenues of your vineyards, to give his eunuchs and servants. Your servants also and handmaids, and your goodliest young men, and your asses he will take away, and put them to his work. Your flocks also he will tithe, and you shall be his servants.

‘And you shall cry out in that day at the face of the king, whom you have chosen to yourselves. and the Lord will not hear you in that day, because you desired for yourselves a king.'”

We reversed Israel’s mistake.

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